Website accessibility should be an essential part of every website. It has many advantages, and we can even look at it as a necessity today. Per Google’s standards, website accessibility plays a crucial role and is an essential element of SEO. Let’s look at how website accessibility affects your SEO and what is the best way to make it a part of your website.
Why is website accessibility important?
SEO is important, and web accessibility is one of its most crucial elements. As we mentioned, there are many benefits to website accessibility. Some of the most important ones are:
- It allows all users to equally access and use the content on your website
- Website accessibility improves user experience
- In a lot of countries, website accessibility is a part of legal requirements, so implementing it on your website will help you to avoid legal lawsuits
- It increases the traffic to your website
- It promotes your brand in a positive and inclusive way
- Search engine optimization that includes website accessibility will help with ranking your website on the first page
How website accessibility affects your SEO?
To explain why website accessibility is important for your SEO, let’s look at some important SEO elements:
- User experience
- Website traffic
- Content optimization
- Content structure and hierarchy
- Website loading time
- Website navigation
- Mobile optimization
These are some of the most crucial elements of SEO. Today we want to talk about how they are connected with website accessibility and how you can use that to boost your website’s search ranking.
Website accessibility improves user experience
People with disabilities cannot use your website like everyone else. However, if you implement website accessibility, you will make that possible. These features will improve access to content, readability, website navigation, and many other elements. We can say that all of the elements on the list above are a part of the overall user experience.
Website accessibility increases website traffic
If you do not implement website accessibility features, you are limiting your website to a specific group of users. Those users with disabilities will not be able to use all features, and they will look for a different website. By helping them have the same quality of experience as everyone else, you are increasing the traffic to your website.
Website accessibility improves content optimization
There are many different types of content on your website—for example, an article, an image, a banner, etc. If you provide alt and caption attributes for images, multi-lingual captions for videos, and transcripts for audio content, you are significantly improving your content. This content optimization will enhance the user experience, but it will also contribute to your SEO efforts.
Website accessibility improves content structure and hierarchy
All of your pages should have clear headings and subheadings. We are not just talking about the actual words but also the font type, font size, and other elements. All users should be able to clearly understand what headings and subheadings are.
This improvement also affects the hierarchy of the pages on your website. That will help the search engines to better crawl your website and understand your content.
Website accessibility improves page load time
There are users with disabilities who use screen readers to navigate a website more easily. That is why you should optimize your code to avoid unnecessary lines, and use semantic HTML. This will help the screen readers better understand the content. Additionally, this improvement will help reduce the loading time of web pages, improve SEO, and guarantee a better website ranking.
Website accessibility affects mobile optimization
We all know that websites must be optimized for mobile devices because more people use mobile phones when browsing the internet. However, we must also consider how this affects users with disabilities. Mobile optimization will include a different layout that is easier to use.
Furthermore, it will significantly boost your SEO. Google values mobile websites, and this element affects the overall search rating.
Website accessibility affects brand image
Every brand must work on improving its public image. As a business, you can only do so much. However, once you become a brand, you have the power to affect people’s lives.
By making your website accessible, you are showing everyone that you care about creating an equal experience for all of your users. This is a very positive message to send to the public. A positive brand image will also help with your SEO because it will expose more people to your business.
How to implement website accessibility
There are many different website accessibility elements that you should include in your website. Here are a couple of examples:
- Alt and Caption attributes for images
- Video and audio transcripts
- The ability to adjust the size and type of the font
- Different color contrast options
- Clearly defined links that do not rely on colors
- Keyboard accessibility
- Simple language
All of these elements should be a part of every website. Furthermore, you have to consider your industry as well. For example, if you are running a moving company, you must consider what features your users use the most. Then, you need to understand what issues users with disabilities experience when using those features.
If you are unsure how to make your website accessible, you should let pros handle this. They will help you improve your SEO quickly and efficiently and ensure that your website is properly optimized for the most important accessibility features.
Conclusion
We can see how website accessibility affects your SEO and why it is essential for user experience. Creating a website that supports equality and ensures that all users have the same options is critical. It would be best if you were mindful of this because the absence of website accessibility may hurt your brand’s image. With that in mind, optimize your website to include all the vital web accessibility features.